400KM with Trev

Tom Baker - Ride God for the 400KM

We missed the start, I blame Trev and his stomach, as we were running a tight morning deadline he was piling food on his plate, a big pile.  We were only nine minutes late but with a flat course and a tail wind for over 100km's it was going to be tough to catch the lead group and it was.  There were six strong experienced riders in the lead group and they were taking full advantage of the terrain and conditions.  Now Trev thinks he's in race and we need to close the gap quickly,  I on the other hand understand 400km is a long way and once we are through this stretch of terrain we will hit 200km of headwinds.   Keeping Trev calmed down became one of the common themes throughout the ride.  We saw the lead group just as they were heading off into the headwind, we dealt with the checkpoint and we were off after them.  This was now our kind of riding so we closed the gap in 40 minutes a total time of 4:40 minutes to catch them.  We now slid into the peleton thankful for the help in the wind.  Trev started doing massive pulls at the front, another theme throughout the ride.  We had one sketchy rider in the group which made me super nervous and irritated Trev to the point you could just feel the attack coming on.  Sure enough off he goes, I'm on his wheel three riders bridge up and now were down to five of us.  We lost two good riders but felt keeping the pressure on was the right thing to do.  Mike, Russ and Ed were our riding companions for the rest of the ride, great guys to ride with and strong riders.

Riding in the early morning darkness

Smooth Group Riding

It was a very flat course but lots of wind until dusk and for the most part we were smart in our riding.  I think we made one tactical mistake not taking in enough nutrition at the early afternoon check point and we almost paid for that later.  We were low or out of water and food but a Chevron gas bar was carefully located in the middle of nowhere that we took advantage of.  The other downside of the tactical error was that we were well supplied when we hit Chez Susan's gourmet food stop and rolled right by, I was kind of bummed about that.  We hit the last check point that was manned (?) great guy, good food, he even had beer, tempting but not smart with 80km's to go.  After chowing down we rolled hard toward the finish, did I mention Trev was doing hard pulls?  We had one stop to get our night riding gear on then rolled for home.  Ed powered down with 15km to go and Russ stayed back with him while Mike, Trev and I rolled into the finish.  Ed and Russ rolled in a few minuted behind us.

I felt tired going into the ride but I had a good ride and with the exception of sore knees faired well for a big early season ride.  Trev was sore on ALL bike contact points and I only hope Marliyn is not mad.

There is a 600Km coming up early April, let me know if your interested, good base miles for the late starters :)